Tag Archives | Surveillance

from NYTs You probably know that it’s not a good idea to use “password” as a password, or your pet’s name, or your birthday. But the worst thing you can do with your passwords — and something that more than 50 percent of people are doing, according to a recent Virginia Tech study — is […]

from CNBC Google knows a lot about you and, if you use Google Maps or other Google apps, it stores a copy of everywhere you go. I recently performed Google’s “Privacy Checkup” to learn a bit more about what it knows about me, and was pretty surprised at the level of detail it had on […]

from TED In an unmissable talk, journalist Carole Cadwalladr digs into one of the most perplexing events in recent times: the UK’s super-close 2016 vote to leave the European Union. Tracking the result to a barrage of misleading Facebook ads targeted at vulnerable Brexit swing voters — and linking the same players and tactics to […]

from Slate Over the weekend, news outlets reported that a New Zealand man named Andrew Barker had found a camera, hidden in a smoke detector, in his Airbnb that was livestreaming a feed of the living room. Barker was in Cork, Ireland, on a 14-month trip around Europe with his family when they checked into […]

from NYTs Search for Sheng Xue on Google in English and you will find the story of an award-winning writer who left China for Canada after the Tiananmen Square uprising and became one of the world’s leading advocates for Chinese democracy. But that same search in Chinese comes up with a very different portrait: Sheng […]

from Wired A friend of mine, who runs a large television production company in the car-mad city of Los Angeles, recently noticed that his intern, an aspiring filmmaker from the People’s Republic of China, was walking to work. When he offered to arrange a swifter mode of transportation, she declined. When he asked why, she […]

from Fast Company I don’t know a lot about security, but I do know that when I use public Wi-Fi—whether on my phone, tablet, or laptop—I should be protecting my traffic with a virtual private network. For those unfamiliar with VPNs, the concept is basically that you use a simple piece of software to open […]

from Buzzfeed.News Amazon has filed a patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office for technology that could one day scan your face and identify who you are, use visual cues to figure out the kind of work you do, and potentially track you as you move around. The patent application, which was filed […]

From The Guardian We’re living through the most profound transformation in our information environment since Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of printing in circa 1439. And the problem with living through a revolution is that it’s impossible to take the long view of what’s happening. Hindsight is the only exact science in this business, and in that […]

from TED ? Have you ever actually read the terms and conditions for the apps you use? Finn Lützow-Holm Myrstad and his team at the Norwegian Consumer Council have, and it took them nearly a day and a half to read the terms of all the apps on an average phone. In a talk about […]

from Fast Company With the exception–perhaps–of your therapist or significant other, no one has more power to learn your secrets than your internet service provider. An ISP can see every website that you choose to access. And with the scrapping of Obama-era privacy regulations last year, the U.S. federal government has no rules against ISPs […]

from 9To5 Mac It will no longer be possible to buy a life insurance policy from John Hancock – one of the largest insurers in the US – without agreeing to use an activity tracker. This can be either a wearable device like an Apple Watch or Fitbit, or a smartphone capable of logging activity, like […]

from Wired During Mark Zuckerberg’s over 10 hours of Congressional testimony last week, lawmakers repeatedly asked how Facebook makes money. The simple answer, which Zuckerberg dodged, is the contributions and online activities of its over two billion users, which allow marketers to target ads with razor precision. In which case, asked representative Paul Tonko (D […]

from Foreign Policy Rongcheng was built for the future. Its broad streets and suburban communities were constructed with an eye to future expansion, as the city sprawls on the eastern tip of China’s Shandong province overlooking the Yellow Sea. Colorful billboards depicting swans bank on the birds — one of the city’s tourist attractions — […]

from NYTs Seeking to build an identification system of unprecedented scope, India is scanning the fingerprints, eyes and faces of its 1.3 billion residents and connecting the data to everything from welfare benefits to mobile phones. Civil libertarians are horrified, viewing the program, called Aadhaar, as Orwell’s Big Brother brought to life. To the government, […]

Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today.
- ERNEST HEMINGWAY

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.
- NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI

When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution... Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.
- PAUL VIRILIO

We are surrounded by the wondrous effects of machines and are encouraged to ignore the ideas embedded in them. Once a technology is admitted it plays out its hand; it does what it is designed to do. Our task is to understand what that design is—that is to say, when we admit a new technology to the culture, we must do so with our eyes wide open.
- NEIL POSTMAN, TECHNOPOLY

You're only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it.
- ROBIN WILLIAMS

Creativity is relational. Its practice is most about casting widely and connecting disparate dots of existing knowledge in new, meaningful ways. To be creative, you’ve got to mine knowledge. You have to know your dots.
- BRUCE NUSSBAUM

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.
- CHARLES DARWIN

Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
- EDWARD SNOWDEN

You invade my privacy, it’s nothing. I try to get it back, it’s a crime. You’ll never understand... it’s not that I have nothing to hide... I have nothing I want you to see.
- THE GIRL, ANON

Be a nuisance where it counts. Do your part to inform and stimulate the public to join your action. Be depressed, discouraged and disappointed at failure and the disheartening effects of ignorance, greed, corruption and bad politics... but never give up.
- MARJORIE STONEMAN DOUGLAS

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win.
- MAHATMA GANDHI

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.
- ALICE WATERS

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.
- THEODORE ROOSEVELT